LONDON - Cameron van der Burgh's 100m breaststroke world record denied Kosuke Kitajima a historic treble and gave South Africa an Olympic swimming first on Sunday.

Van der Burgh was never headed, winning in 58.46sec to better the previous world record of 58.58sec held by Australian Brenton Rickard.

He became the first South African man to claim individual Olympic swimming gold, although South Africa won the men's 4x100m freestyle relay in 2004.

"If there is such a thing as the perfect race, I think I swam it at the right time tonight," van der Burgh said.

With the mouth-watering men's 4x100m freestyle relay still to come, records were tumbling in the Olympic pool, starting with American Dana Vollmer's 100m butterfly triumph in 55.98sec.

Vollmer became the first woman to dip under 56 seconds in the event, bettering the previous world mark of 56.06 set by Sweden's Sarah Sjostrom in 2009.

Third at the turn, she powered home to beat China's Lu Ying by 89-hundredths of a second.

"It was everything I could have dreamed it would have been," said Vollmer, who failed to qualify for the 2008 Olympic team after earning relay gold as a teenager in Athens.

Lu took silver in 56.87sec while Australia's Alicia Coutts rallied from last at the turn -- and recovered from a throat-full of water with 15m remaining -- to take bronze in 56.94.

The world records for Vollmer and van der Burgh were the second and third of the London Games, where many predicted records would be hard to come by as the marks established in the era of the now-banned high-tech bodysuits linger on the books.

Van der Burgh dedicated his gold medal to his late training partner Alexander Dale Oen of Norway, who was at an Arizona training camp in April when he died of heart failure as the result of a blood clot.

"I don't really care about the world record," said van der Burgh, who

finished ahead of Australian Christian Sprenger and American Brendan Hansen.

"Once you have become an Olympic champion that can never be taken away from you."

That's an experience Kitajima is more than familiar with after completing the 100m-200m breaststroke doubles in both 2004 and 2008.

The Japanese veteran finished fifth, and said van der Burgh's pace was just] too fast for him.

"It was a really tough race and I needed the world record to win," Kitajima said. "I didn't have the ability to be honest."

No man has won the same swimming event at three successive Games.

In the night's other individual final, France's Camille Muffat won the

women's 400m freestyle in an Olympic record of 4:01.45.

American Allison Schmitt was second in 4:01.77 and 2008 Olympic champion Rebecca Adlington stormed home for bronze in 4:03.01 to the deafening cheers of the home crowd.

(AFP)